Welcome to Loffs Watch, a popularly named new series where we check in with the Washington Capitals’ playoff chances.
Last night Dylan Larkin played his first game in almost three weeks. His two goals powered the Detroit Red Wings to a 6-3 win over the New York Islanders. According to HockeyViz that victory increased their playoff chances by more than ten percentage points. Meanwhile, New Jersey’s win over Winnipeg nudged the Caps’ chances down a bit.
The Capitals have played two fewer games than the Red Wings, whom they sit three points behind in the wild-card race. Here are those standings as of Friday morning:
Using a few popular prediction models, here’s how likely the Capitals are to make the 2024 Stanley Cup Playoffs.
| Source | % |
|---|---|
| HockeyViz | 40 |
| Moneypuck | 38 |
| The Athletic | – |
(The Athletic did not update their numbers this morning. They had the Capitals at 35 percent yesterday.)
It’s roughly a two-in-five chance. Or, in the most understandable way possible, it’s as likely to happen as it is for your level-one half-elf bard to pass a DC 13 skill check without any proficiency or advantage on your d20. Forty percent is mostly flat from the day before, but it’s down from the mid-fifties last week and obviously way up from the low point in the mid-teens the Caps were at at the beginning of the month.
Moneypuck and HockeyViz agree: tonight is a massive game. The Caps could return above 50 percent with a win over Evgeny Kuznetsov and the Carolina Hurricanes.
By the way, you can buy loffs gear, by far our least popular merchandise ever, from our store.
Loffs Watch Theme Song For The Day
Thank you for reading Loffs Watch. We’ll see you next time.
CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated the difficulty rating of the skill check as DC12. DC13 is the correct difficulty rating. RMNB regrets the error.
